Medieval & Renaissance Music: A Brief Survey

When the Early Music FAQ project
began in 1994, we wanted to provide beginning or intermediate
listeners with a concise and straightforward listing of recorded
materials which would help them to survey the repertory in sound.
In retrospect, the availability of CD recordings has become even
more haphazard over the years, and maintaining such a list in a
fully worthwhile state has become nearly impossible. Although the
recording-based selections continue to have their
merits, especially given the alternate selections included in the
individual links, creating a survey which does not mention recordings
seems at least as worthwhile today. The recording-oriented reader
is advised to peruse this survey, and then use our
CD index to search for suitable recordings, ultimately using
our "purchasing information" links (or other means) to
determine if they are presently available. Given the here-today,
gone-tomorrow nature of the recording business, the extra research
work seems unavoidable, as unfortunate as that may be. Of course,
another possibility is access to a good music library, and this
option is heartily recommended wherever feasible. It is certainly
the only fiscally prudent means for the reader who wants to consult
scores.

Plainchant and Monophonic Sacred Music

Especially upon considering the upcoming discussion, it can be
difficult to remember that the majority of liturgical music throughout
the medieval era was plainchant.
Gregorian chant is often used
as a label, but the term "plainchant" is intended to be
more inclusive. It indicates a single sacred melody, without
accompaniment, sung by a single person or by a choir in which each
member sings the same part. In many respects, medieval chant is
the same chant which can be heard in monasteries today, and much
of the most important chant (or plainsong) was composed by early
medieval saints. Another word to describe plainchant is
monophony, which - as
opposed to polyphony - means a single sound, whether
sacred or not. The concept of mode
was created to categorize plainchant, and is something which can
often apply to polyphony in only strained fashion.

Plainchant manuscripts began to survive in some quantity in
Western Europe from about 890. There were some isolated and
intriguing examples prior to this period, but they pose many
difficulties of interpretation. Generally speaking, as chant
evolved from the medieval era into modern times, its rhythm became
more regular and less varied. This fact is partly conjectural, as
early chant notation did not include rhythm. The medieval era saw
the creation of many varieties of plainchant, especially if one
includes those of Byzantine provenance. Even restricted to Western
Europe, as this survey will be, there were different styles derived
from different liturgical rites, such as Ambrosian (Milanese) chant
and Mozarabic (Spanish) chant. There were also variants in use
within the same rite, namely Roman chant, Sarum (English) chant,
and even Cistercian (a monastic order) chant. The type of chant
mainly identified with "Gregorian" today is what might
be called Frankish or Carolingian chant, the style installed in
France under Charlemagne, with the help of advisors from Rome.

Beyond truly liturgical music, i.e. music used during church
services, the medieval era saw a wide variety of monophonic
non-liturgical music written on sacred themes, usually in Latin.
This is generally called para-liturgical music. Today, one
very popular composer of such music is
Hildegard von Bingen
(c.1098-1179), a mystic abbess from Germany. Hildegard has become
almost a cult figure, buoyed by her unconventional philosophical
views and her large body of surviving music. Although one can
easily get the mistaken idea that Hildegard was the only person
writing para-liturgical chant in those days, or that she was widely
known, there were many other composers writing in related styles.
In Paris, the intellectual center of Europe at the time, the most
famous composer of para-liturgical music was Peter Abélard
(1079-1142), who is also well-known in literary circles for his
affair with the noblewoman Heloïse.

Early Polyphony and Notre Dame

Although plainchant forms the largest surviving body of medieval
music, by the later twelfth century its technical significance
diminished. That is to say, new plainchant remained rather similar
to old plainchant, and the most widely noted developments in Western
music occurred in the areas of secular poetry and polyphony. Music
historians focus on polyphony, because the development of polyphony
helps us to understand the origins of Western harmony. Remember,
though, that an important part of enjoying early music is enjoying
it for its own sake, and not because it points to something else.
In that sense, plainchant is relatively neglected by performers
& listeners today (although I admit that I feel the same way,
and am more interested in polyphony). Although most churches sang
only plainchant on most Sundays, polyphonic compositions began to
appear for important feasts at rich locales. Music became a vanity
item.

Aside from sparse or textbook (such as the famous Musica
Enchiriadis, c.900) examples, the earliest surviving polyphony
appeared in the eleventh century. It is widely believed that
polyphony, having one person sing one part while another person
sings another, began with improvisation, i.e. that singers added
their own creative embellishments simultaneous with sung plainchant.
This was a variation on another creative addition to plainchant,
troping, which is the insertion of extra texts and melodies
between verses of well-known chants. Important tropes, which are
still basically plainchant, survived from the ninth century, and
became something of an independent genre. The surviving polyphony
of the eleventh century is contained mainly in what are called the
Chartres Manuscripts and the Winchester Troper
(c.1000), and it was from this point onward that Western music
history seems so much more eventful.

The earliest polyphony was called organum, and involved
adding a higher, faster-moving melody to an existing plainchant.
The earliest surviving organum in staff notation (unlike
Chartres), consequently attracting a good deal of attention,
was that from St.-Martial de Limoges in Aquitaine. Closely related
in style was that of the Codex Calixtinus (c.1170), which
was carried to Spain in the pilgrimage for St. James of Compostela.
Shortly afterward, organum was fully embraced in Paris, and was
composed in volume during and after the construction of the famous
Notre Dame cathedral (beginning c.1163). The first major compilation
was devoted to a set of two-voice organum for the full liturgical
year, Magnus liber organi, apparently supervised by the
composer Leonin (fl.c.1150-1201), to whom no works can be attributed
with certainty. Leonin was succeeded by
Perotin (fl.c.1200), about
whose life even less is known, but some of whose music can be
identified with confidence. Together with other composers, Perotin
added voices and refined some of Leonin's work, forming a broader
repertory still identified with the Magnus liber. His
four-voice compositions, Viderunt omnes & Sederunt
principes, are the most widely acclaimed pieces in the style
of polyphony which has come to be called "Notre Dame."

Besides adding more independent voices to what began as a two-part
form of organum, yielding three- and even four-part music, composers
of the Notre Dame school expanded the field of para-liturgical
music by using original melodies as the basis for polyphonic music.
This form, which is not indebted to plainchant, is called the
conductus. Besides the monophonic conductus, composers such
as Perotin created the polyphonic conductus, an essentially free
form for harmonic invention. This period also saw the development
of mensural notation, by which the lengths of notes were
measured. This was the beginning of notated rhythm. The music of
Notre Dame was so famous that it was copied far & wide into
later songbooks, including the famous Codex Las Huelgas
(c.1325) of Spain and the Carmina Burana (c.1230) of Germany.
The latter has become widely known in Carl Orff's modern setting,
but mainly contains settings of Notre Dame & troubadour (see
below) melodies using different lyrics, in what was at that time
an old-fashioned form of notation.

Secular Songs

The period during which polyphony rose to prominence in liturgical
music, namely the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was also the
time from which secular songs began to survive. It is difficult
for us to believe today that there were not all manner of songs
sung by ordinary people in the vernacular, i.e. their own local
language rather than Latin. However, while this was likely true
during the early medieval era, it was not a phenomenon considered
worthy of note or preservation. It was not until the era of
the troubadours, often
taken to begin with Guillaume of Poitiers the ninth Duke of Aquitaine
(1071-1126), that secular music began to take on a life of its own
in the surviving literature. The troubadours, together with Western
vernacular poetry as a whole, came from southern France and wrote
in what is sometimes called the langue d'Oc or the Occitan
language. The troubadours were generally aristocrats (their peasant
associates were called jongleurs) who took an interest in
writing songs about love & war. It was at least partly chivalric
concerns which initiated this culture of "courtly love,"
providing themes which were to prove dominant in Western art song
for the next three centuries.

As was plainchant, troubadour songs were monophonic, although
today many people believe that they were often accompanied by one
or more instruments (generally harp or lute, or maybe fiddle)
playing improvised elaborations of the main melody. Unfortunately,
not nearly as many melodies survived as do texts, and they sometimes
survived separately. This makes troubadour performances rather
more dependent on the whims of the performers than some other music
of this era, but that may also have been true at the time. The
troubadour phenomenon spread quickly to Catalonia and northern
Italy, and included a prominent role for female composers, called
trobairitz. Prominent troubadours included Bernart de
Ventadorn (c.1125-c.1195) and Guiraut Riquier (c.1230-1292), the
so-called last of the troubadours. Much of the decline in Occitan
culture can be traced to the Crusade against the Cathars (1209-1255),
and its resulting destruction. By that time, the artistic lead
returned to northern France.

In northern France, or in the French language proper, composers
of secular verse were called trouvères, meaning
"one who finds or discovers" (as did "trobador"
in Occitan). Trouvère songs were generally more regular in
meter, and even became polyphonic in the hands of late trouvères
Adam de la Halle (d.c.1288) & Jehan de Lescurel (d.1304). We
will return to the important development of polyphonic secular song
soon.

Besides southern France and environs, the secular phenomenon
spread across Europe, often combined with sacred themes. One of
the most important collections in all of medieval music was the
Cantigas de Santa María,
compiled by King Alfonso X of Castille (1221-1284). These songs
in the Galician language adopted the Virgin Mary as the "lady"
of traditional troubadour love themes, setting Alfonso's poetry to
troubadour and troubadour-inspired melodies. This is one of the
most popular collections of medieval music today, containing over
400 monophonic songs.

Traveling aristocratic singers were also a phenomenon in Germany,
and were known as minnesängers. By the 1500s, their
descendants would be known as meistersingers, and later be
an inspiration for Richard Wagner. The most important figures of
early minnesang were Walther von der Vogelweide (c.1170-c.1230)
& Neidhart von Reuental (c.1180-c.1240), and it is they who
set the tone for later German lyric. In England, only a handful
of vernacular songs survived from the entire medieval era, but they
are often intriguing for their uniqueness. One particularly famous
example is the polyphonic canon (or "rota") Sumer is
icumen in (c.1250).

Finally, and note that we have now traversed the countries of
Western Europe, Italian vernacular song in this period was closely
intertwined with sacred themes. In laude surviving in a
pair of prominent manuscripts (Laudario di Cortona, c.1250
& Laudario di Magliabechiano, c.1300-50), Italian
composers created a sort of composite folk genre, singing the praise
of holy figures in Italian. Although the laud did not represent
a technical development in music history, it persisted as a distinct
Italian genre into the 1500s, including examples in Ars Nova (see
below) style and even some composed by prominent composers of the
Renaissance. Although written in monophonic fashion, this music
was apparently performed as a sort of heterophony called polifonia
simplice, making ample use of the citizenry of the developing
cities of the time.

The Motet and the Ars Nova

The motet is a form which was to have a long history in Western
music. It arose from elaborating the cadences of the great polyphonic
works of Perotin et al., called clausulas. These were the
fastest and most technical parts of organum at the time, and the
ingenious composers of the thirteenth century soon had the idea to
add voices with different texts (the motetus, from the Latin
for "word") to the original. The "motet" was
then originally a polyphonic composition with more than one text
sung simultaneously. Some had three or four, often in both French
& Latin. This music can be quite intriguing, but is also
difficult to appreciate on a single hearing.

Unfortunately for our historical curiosity, the development of
the motet was mostly anonymous. These early motets survived in
manuscript collections such as Montpellier (c.1270-c.1300),
La Clayette (c.1260), and Bamberg (c.1260-90).
Eventually this style of composition came to be called Ars
Antiqua, meeting some of its final elaborations in the work of
composers such as Petrus de Cruce (fl.c.1290). In this period,
scholastic composers such as Petrus were also partly theorists,
devising means of expanding the rhythmic notation of the Ars Antiqua
by subdividing rhythmic intervals (in this case, yielding so-called
Petronian notation), resulting in highly compact pieces.

Even more radical was the notation of the Ars Nova,
usually credited to Philippe de Vitry (c.1291-1361), and outlined
in a now-lost treatise of that name. This was a self-conscious
development by Parisian scholastics to change the way polyphony
was written, both rhythmically and harmonically. It involved
creating repeated rhythmic figures called isorhythms, as
well as a new approach to consonance and dissonance. Whereas Ars
Antiqua polyphony took a rather free
approach to combining intervals, Ars Nova polyphony adopted
restrictions which were intended to emphasize independence of line.
Throughout this period, however, the open fifth was used for fully
stable cadences. Motets of the period often contained bitter
sarcasm and complicated contemporary allusions, meeting something
of a climax in the satirical Roman de Fauvel (1316). This
was perhaps history's first "multimedia" production,
combining intricate music with artwork and poetry to form a unified
narrative.

Secular Polyphony of the Ars Nova

By far, the leading composer of his age was
Guillaume de Machaut
(c.1300-1377). In his hands, the Ars Nova style lost any semblance
of scholastic artificiality, as even his Latin motets became models
of eloquence. Building on the style of the late trouvères,
Machaut's greatest achievement was in polyphonic secular songwriting.
Although Machaut continued to write secular monophony, in the
lengthy lai and more compact virelai forms, his work
in the polyphonic ballade and rondeau forms was to
prove decisive for subsequent generations of songwriters. Machaut
was the greatest poet of his age, and it was his own poetry he set
to polyphony, providing a unified vision which undoubtedly helped
to yield the clarity of texture for which he is known. Machaut's
work survived in a series of carefully prepared manuscripts, the
compilation of which he himself apparently supervised.

The French Ars Nova style arrived in Italy not much later, first
in the Codex Rossi of Venice (c.1340), and then with greater
force in Florence, ultimately appearing in such grand compilations
as the Squarcialupi Codex (c.1410). There, such composers
as the blind organist Francesco
Landini (c.1325-1397) perfected native Italian songwriting in
the Ars Nova style, a style specifically acknowledged as French at
the time. This was the beginning of the madrigal, but it
was as yet a form with no real resemblance to the later Italian
songs of the same name (see below). A modest quantity of instrumental
dances (istanpitta, etc.) survived from this period, forming
a major component of the very small amount of surviving medieval
instrumental music. One can also perceive the beginnings of modern
life in the Italian cities, and perhaps some humanist ideals (see
below) in the settings of Landini and others.

Sacred Music of the Ars Nova

In the fourteenth century, for the first time, secular music
had the upper hand in artistic developments. However, sacred music
was not neglected. The first "mass cycles," thematically
related sequences of sections of the Mass Ordinary, a form which
was to prove so significant for later generations of composers,
were written in this period. The earliest such surviving cycle
was the anonymous Messe de Tournai (c.1330). There were a
few others compiled in the period: Sorbonne, Toulouse,
& Barcelona, as well as the famous Messe de Notre
Dame by Machaut. Not only was Machaut's cycle more integrated
than the anonymous cycles, whose movements may have been by different
composers, but it is perhaps the best-known single work of medieval
music today. Although Machaut's innovation in this area was not
copied directly, it is a testament to his creative ability as a
composer.

While these cycles can seem more intriguing to us today, giving
as they do an apparent glimpse of early symphonic thought, various
individual mass movements from this period were of intricate and
beautiful construction. Many of these mass movements (Kyrie,
Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) were attributed to specific
composers, although little is known of them aside from their names.
Many others were anonymous. This was the period of the "Babylonian
Captivity" of the Papacy in Avignon, and prominent manuscripts
from that region were Ivrea (c.1370) & Apt
(c.1405). Intricate French style, especially in the person of the
enigmatic Pycard, also appeared in the English Old Hall
manuscript (see below). Finally, a uniquely Spanish example was
the Llibre Vermell of
Montserrat (1399), an unusual combination of sacred & folk
elements into a cycle of pilgrim songs.

The Ars Subtilior

Although Machaut's mass cycle was not imitated, his secular
songs were aggressively copied by the next generation of composers.
As with their contemporaries who wrote sacred music, and sometimes
they were the same men, little is known of these composers beyond
their names, and not always that. The style of music does, however,
have a colorful title, Ars Subtilior, a term coined in modern
times to mean "more subtle art." These composers took
songwriting in France & Italy to new levels of sophistication.
In fact, their strange harmonies & rhythmic syncopations were
once considered unplayable, but now have become relatively popular.
These composers revelled in subtlety, combining literary allusion
and oblique quotation with a free-wheeling, almost dream-like
musical idiom. It has been suggested that a group called the
fumeurs may have been
involved in drug use, but the idea is probably untenable.

The complications of this style reached intricate heights,
including staff notation in the shape of circles or harps, and
puzzles to be solved before perceiving the composers' meaning.
This was especially true of the famous Chantilly Codex
(c.1390), whereas the other prominent Ars Subtilior manuscripts,
Modena (c.1410) & Turin (c.1415), extended this
style musically. The latter was a unique representative of the
musical culture of Cyprus under French rule, preserved only by
virtue of coming to Europe as a wedding gift. By the early 1400s,
the Ars Subtilior style became less self-involved in the hands of
composers such as Johannes Ciconia (c.1370-1412), and soon gave
way to a smoother harmonic idiom.

The English Countenance

Native English style did not follow the angular & animated
rhythmic ideas of the French Ars Nova, and consequently retained
a more subdued & regular harmonic style based on discant. The
resulting style made frequent use of the interval of the third,
considered a mild dissonance in medieval theory, and consequently
its rise to prominence was a major part of the historical transition
from medieval to modern sonorities. Together with a few French-style
pieces, the Old Hall manuscript (c.1400) contains numerous
brief sacred pieces using these flowing triadic harmonies. The
sonority arising from such a use of thirds was called the "English
Countenance," and became popular in Continental Europe through
English influence in Burgundy in the wake of the Hundred Years War.
In addition, prominent English composers
John Dunstable (c.1390-1453)
& Leonel Power (c.1380-1445) decisively took up the cyclic
mass, beginning a trend which would establish it as a leading
musical genre heading into the 1500s.

Burgundy and the Renaissance

More regular phrasing and prominent use of the interval of the
third soon found its way into European music as a whole, and it
was composers from the area around present-day Belgium who took
the lead in developing contrapuntal technique over the subsequent
generations. The first such composer to follow what was to become
a fairly typical career path was
Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474),
who also inaugurated the period from which we tend to have documentary
details of the lives of prominent composers. As Machaut had before
him, Dufay was able to unify some of the stylistic trends of his
day, as well as to excel in virtually every form of composition.
Perhaps the most telling signs of the increasing prominence of
polyphony were the numerous, straightforward chant harmonizations
Dufay wrote while working for the Papal Choir. By this time, the
older organum style stood on its head, with the chant appearing in
the highest voice, rather than the lowest. Dufay is now known to
have written plainchant as well.

During the early phase of his career, Dufay wrote the last &
largest examples of the isorhythmic motet, an Ars Nova genre. His
Nuper rosarum flores in this form is particularly famous,
written as it was for the dedication of Brunelleschi's dome in
Florence (1436). Other isorhythmic motets were connected to other
landmark events of the era, heralding a cosmopolitan mindset which
tangibly linked music to Renaissance art & architecture. The
musical Renaissance is therefore placed with Dufay in many
chronologies, although this is an essentially arbitrary selection.
As we shall see, other critical changes which shaped the modern or
"High Renaissance" style in music did not occur for
decades. In fact, his isorhythmic motets show Dufay working in a
medieval idiom. Intonation during this period is also believed to
have remained largely the Pythagorean
tuning of the medieval era, but some areas do show signs of
change. Although thirds were now quite prominent, they did not
become standard in closing cadences for nearly a century.

As so many northern composers were to do, after several important
posts in Italy, Dufay returned to northern France to end his career.
There he wrote his last cantus firmus masses, combining the
cyclical ideas of the English with his own gift for melody and
French eloquence. In elaborate mass cycles such as Missa l'homme
armé, Missa Ecce ancilla Domini, and Missa
Ave regina cælorum, Dufay set the tone for what was to
become the most important form for the next generation. English
composers working in Burgundy, such as
Walter Frye (d.1474), also
continued to expand upon their native cantus firmus ideas. The
most significant example may have been the anonymous Missa
Caput (c.1440), once thought to be by Dufay. Cantus firmus
technique places an existing melody, which may or may not be
plainchant, in a middle voice (the tenor), allowing voices both
above and below to create surrounding harmonic texture. Mass cycles
were typically unified by using the same cantus firmus melody in
each movement. Throughout the fifteenth century, this technique
was adopted in increasingly creative fashion.

Dufay was also a prolific composer of chansons (French
for songs). There his music showed a concision and boldness of
expression which helped to distinguish it most clearly from that
of the previous generation. Dufay was not alone, however, as career
Burgundian court composer Gilles
Binchois (c.1400-1460) was at least as well-known for his own
chansons. Binchois' songs were representative of an impressive
outflowing of French courtly song in the period. They were basically
conservative in poetic form, and featured achingly flowing harmonies
in contrary motion. These chanson-writers elaborated on the same
themes of love & devotion as did Machaut. The conservative
style was developed throughout the fifteenth century, and was
codified in large manuscripts such as the Chansonnier Cordiforme
(c.1475). It met something of a climax with the intricate chansons
of Antoine Busnoys
(c.1430-1492), after which it yielded to humanist concerns of
text-setting (see below) and more extroverted expression, even as
Burgundian composers such as La Rue (see below) worked to extend
the old style.

The ubiquitousness of the Burgundian style during this era can
easily be perceived in other countries. England, as it had to this
date, offered rather little in the way of surviving secular music,
with the English examples in Burgundy naturally being of similar
construction. In Italy, native composition from the era of Landini
gave way to northerners, although Dufay did oblige by writing some
songs in Italian. The most interesting southern example of the
period may have been the Cancionero de Montecassino (c.1480),
compiled under Aragonese rule in Naples, and featuring songs in
various languages (together with sacred music, including settings
by Dufay) collected over decades.

This was also the era from which instrumental music began to
survive in any quantity, especially in the form of instrumental
transcriptions of vocal works, such as in the Buxheimer
Orgelbuch (c.1450-c.1470). Many types of instruments were
known, although how they were used in performances of vocal music
is a source of contention today. Besides the organ (of the cathedral
and chamber varieties), both the harpsichord & clavichord
appeared in the fifteenth century. Instruments of more modest
technical construction, often with hazy histories, were grouped
into loud & soft ensembles called alta capella &
bassa capella. The former consisted of converted folk
instruments, often used for outdoor play: shawms, bagpipes, trumpets,
and pipes of various sorts, sometimes with percussion. The latter
consisted of the traditional aristocratic accompaniment instruments
(harp & lute), other plucked strings such as the cittern, the
developing recorder, as well as the bowed-string predecessors of
the violin (viol, vielle, or fiddle). Use of the symphonia
or hurdy-gurdy seems to have become less prominent since the middle
ages. Instruments tended to be grouped homogeneously in performance,
not for variety of sound, such that 3 lutes might play an adaptation
of a 3-part chanson.

Franco-Flemish Polyphony

Perhaps the most imposing legacy of this entire era was the body
of large-scale works of vocal polyphony created by northern composers
during the decades around 1500. In this, the mass cycle took pride
of place with its expanded vocal ranges & clarified functions,
as well as its increasingly creative array of unifying techniques.
These masses became veritable symphonies. However, it should be
remembered that during a real, liturgical performance, the
"movements" of the symphony were separated by long periods
of religious activity as well as plainchant, the latter perhaps
harmonized in some locations. The motet was also a highly significant
genre in the fifteenth century, especially because of its variable
text and opportunity for personal expression, but was rather
different from its original form. By the era of the Franco-Flemish
masters, motets tended to have a single text (although they sometimes
had more), and were almost entirely sacred in content. The thirteenth
century motet had been primarily a secular genre. Motets were
composed especially on Marian antiphons (plainchant referring to
the Virgin Mary), as well as on more personal texts selected by
composers, perhaps extracted from Biblical sources or referring to
contemporary events. The mass, by contrast, used a fixed text.
Other large-scale genres emerged, such as the Requiem or
mass for the dead, with its differing text, as well as settings of
the lamentations.

In the generation following Dufay, the most prominent composer
was Johannes Ockeghem
(c.1410-1497), court composer to three kings of France. Ockeghem
was credited with giving the bass voice an independent character
in contrapuntal texture, as well as expanding the range of the
cyclic mass by unifying it with means other than a cantus firmus
or by varying the way the cantus firmus is deployed in different
sections. His Requiem is the earliest surviving polyphonic setting,
and popular today for its gravity. Ockeghem is also known for a
handful of fine motets, as well as for songs following the idiom
of his teacher Binchois. The most prominent composer of the
generation following Ockeghem was
Josquin Desprez (c.1455-1521).
Josquin's career paralleled Dufay's, beginning in the north, and
leading to prestigious appointments in Italy, including at the
Vatican. Josquin also returned to northern France later in life,
where he continued to compose some of his most famous music.

Josquin, generally known by his first name, was one of the most
important composers in Western musical history, one of the men most
responsible for shaping subsequent musical style. Although the
canon, or the repetition of a melody in a different voice, had long
been used as a contrapuntal device, Josquin pioneered the technique
of pervasive imitation, by which the entire contrapuntal
structure was formed via repetition of one melody in different
times in other voices. This technique was the ancestor of the
modern fugue. Josquin was also sensitive to text-setting
concerns of the time (see below), adopting elements of word-painting
which would become part of the madrigal style (see below), as well
as further simplifying the melismatic melodies & sometimes
florid counterpoint of the previous generation. These factors
contributed to Petrucci's decision to make Josquin the first composer
to whom a complete printed collection was devoted (Venice, 1502).

Josquin's most characteristic music is found in his motets,
where the freedom to choose the texts provided him with an opportunity
to let his musical imagination respond to them. Among numerous
works, the motets Ave Maria, Stabat Mater, and
Miserere mei are particularly popular. All composers of
this era had a predilection for reusing melodies found elsewhere,
as a sort of homage, and so e.g. Josquin's Stabat Mater
reused the tenor melody of Binchois' chanson Comme femme
desconfortée. Prominent among Josquin's mass cycles
are Missa de beata Virgine, Missa Hercules Dux
Ferrariæ, and Missa Pange lingua. The latter is
believed to be his final setting, in harmonies remarkably close to
the original plainsong. The Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariæ
illustrates the predilection of the era for coded melodies, with
a cantus firmus derived from the name of the Duke of Ferrara, site
of one of Josquin's most lucrative appointments (1503). Although
Josquin is not particularly known for his chanson writing, examples
such as Mille regretz were popular models for composers of
the succeeding generation. He also wrote the famous motet-chanson
Déploration sur la mort de Ockeghem, showing a tangible
connection to what has been presumed to be his teacher.

Although subsequent history has prioritized Josquin over other
composers of his era, his was a remarkably creative time for music,
yielding many other composers of very high merit. Prominent masters
of the Franco-Flemish school included
Pierre de La Rue (c.1460-1518),
Jacob Obrecht (1457/8-1505),
Antoine Brumel (c.1460-c.1515),
and Heinrich Isaac (c.1450-1517).
La Rue mainly remained resident at the Habsburg court in Burgundy,
as the dominant native composer of his land, but also outside the
increasingly bright spotlight of Italy. Obrecht was a master of
large-scale structure, creating some of the most elaborately
symphonic masses of the period, and often showing an indifference
to text in favor of abstraction. He died of plague in Ferrara.
Brumel followed Obrecht & Josquin to Ferrara, and is popular
today for his more chordal style, especially in the Missa Et
ecce terræ motus in 12 parts. Isaac exhibited the clearcut
phrasing & concision of Josquin, following an almost-obligatory
Italian service (under the Medicis in Florence) with a decisive
move to Germany, where he introduced the Franco-Flemish style.
One result was the massive Choralis Constantinus (1509), a
set of practical Propers settings for the entire liturgical year.
Among contemporaries who composed secular songs in what was then
a transitional style, Loyset
Compère (c.1445-1518) &
Alexander Agricola
(1446-1506) were prominent. The latter is particularly well-known
for his variations on the song De tous bien playne by
Burgundian composer Hayne van Ghizeghem (c.1445-c.1472). Remarkably,
every one of these men was born in (what would become) northeast
France, Belgium, or the southern Netherlands.

Following the generation of Josquin, it becomes more difficult
to write of a "central line" of musical development, as
sources became more voluminous and styles spread across Europe.
Among Josquin's successors, the most prominent were Nicolas Gombert
(c.1495-1557), Adrian Willaert (c.1490-1562), and Jacobus Clemens
(c.1510-c.1556), likewise all northerners. Gombert relocated with
the Habsburg Emperor Charles V to Spain in the wake of the conquest
of the New World, and wrote in the densest contrapuntal idiom yet.
Willaert moved to Venice, and especially by his teaching, helped
set the stage for what was to become the glory days of Venetian
music. He also published the first volume of original polyphonic
instrumental music, Musica Nova (1540). Clemens remained
in the Netherlands, writing mass cycles and motets in a traditional
idiom, thus forming something of a conclusion to the Franco-Flemish
style. However, he was also involved in the Reformation, setting
psalms in Dutch, the Souterliedekens (1540).

Humanism, Text, and the Printing Press

Although one can perceive various aspects of Dufay's music &
career which evoke Renaissance ideals, and perhaps even some earlier
examples, with the rise of Josquin we can know unequivocally that
we are seeing the modern era. Besides more technical musical
factors such as the shift to thirds as cadential intervals and the
related shift to tuning systems emphasizing thirds, Renaissance
ideals involved attitudes toward text and human interaction which
can be observed in music. The movement itself can be linked most
concretely to Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536), an important
philosopher and writer with a keen interest in music (he claims to
have sung under the direction of Obrecht, and apparently knew
Ockeghem). Humanism was a broad-based movement which would eventually
weaken the role of the church.

Whereas medieval music often sought beauty & intricacy as
a testament to the glory of God, Renaissance music wanted to become
more directly communicative with humanity. The result was more
regular phrasing & textures, and a new attention to text. The
latter sought to make the words fully audible, a major change from
the sometimes three or four simultaneous texts of fourteenth century
scholastic motets, and to put music at the service of text, to
illuminate it and communicate it better. Happy thoughts would go
with rising figures and vice versa; longer or more important words
would have longer music, etc. Medieval practices of putting lengthy
melismas on meaningless articles were considered "barbaric"
by the 1500s, and ideas of word-painting (or what are sometimes
called "madrigalisms") were in full force.

Beyond this shift (and whether we regard earlier music as having
the shortcomings which composers of the 1500s thought it had is a
matter of personal opinion), it was the invention of the printing
press and the subsequent mass publication of music which most
decisively heralded the modern age. Petrucci's first publication
was a collection of instrumental chanson adaptations by various
composers, Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A (1501), to which
he soon added a collection of masses by Josquin (see above). It
was from this point that music was to survive in volume, and it
consequently becomes that much more difficult to form a unified
historical narrative. For this reason, I will now discuss each
major Western country separately, giving a glimpse of the sheer
volume of musical activity which can now be documented.

Italy in the 1500s

As described above, music in Italy during the fifteenth century
was dominated by foreigners. However, although one can certainly
wonder what became of the native compositional schools developed
in the Ars Nova period, it is also true that the most significant
music came to be written there, with northern composers such as
Dufay & Josquin composing some of their best works in Italy.
By the early 1500s, native polyphonists such as Costanzo Festa
(c.1490-1545) began to appear, and secular songs in Italian began
to replace those in French as the leading edge of artistic development.
French or Occitan lyrics had been the leading secular tradition
from the earliest surviving songs.

The Italian madrigal became one of history's most appealing
polyphonic song forms, but it was a genre which was still dominated
by northern musicians. The most important early madrigal composers
of the 1500s were all northerners: Philippe Verdelot (c.1485-c.1550),
Jacobus Arcadelt (c.1505-1568), and Cipriano de Rore (c.1515-1565).
Each published multiple books of madrigals. In the next generation,
native Italians such as Luca Marenzio (1533-99) joined northerners
such as Giaches de Wert (1535-1596) in positions of prominence.
The later madrigal featured all manner of word-painting, tortured
expressions of romantic longing, and frequently erotic themes.
The restraint of the Burgundian chanson was left far behind in the
wake of a new emphasis on virtuosity. The madrigal was as strong
as ever as the sixteenth century drew to a close with the work of
composers such as Sigismondo D'India (c.1582-1629), Carlo Gesualdo
(c.1561-1613), and especially Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643).
Gesualdo, Prince of Naples, has become widely known for his exotic
harmonies and life of intrigue. Of course, Monteverdi became the
greatest pioneer of the Baroque style (see below).

Sacred music was also heavily cultivated, and most of the
madrigalists wrote mass cycles and motets. Beyond that, the Sistine
Chapel continued to rise in prominence for its music, counting as
one of its resident composers one of the most influential in Western
music, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c.1525-1594). A conservative
composer, Palestrina wrote dozens of mass cycles as well as hundreds
of motets formed into various cycles. He was particularly well-known
for his clear textures and audible texts, making his music some of
the most studied in subsequent centuries. Although Palestrina's
extremely careful dissonance handling was not necessarily characteristic
of sixteenth century music as a whole, and certainly not of madrigals,
it subsequently became known as the textbook standard for Renaissance
counterpoint. Palestrina's legend grew to the point that his
Missa Papæ Marcelli (c.1555) was said to have salvaged
the place of polyphony in the Catholic liturgy in the wake of the
Council of Trent (1545-63). Although the story is essentially
fanciful, the straightforward homophonic texture of this and other
works serves to illustrate the trends in sacred composition during
the Counter-Reformation.

Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594) was another hugely prolific composer
of high reputation who worked in Italy during this period. Lasso,
or Lassus, was a northerner and is sometimes taken to be the main
representative of the fifth and concluding generation (beginning
with Dufay) of Franco-Flemish polyphonists. Even more than
Palestrina, who also left a variety of composite forms, Lasso wrote
in every form & style of the day, in quantity: mass cycles
(including emerging sonic combinations such as the double choir),
motets, lamentations, madrigal cycles, chansons, German lieder,
folksy villanellas (including racist & sexist lyrics), etc.
Lassus was truly cosmopolitan in outlook, and left Italy for good
to take up the leading post in Munich in 1556.

Song forms such as the villanella were representative of the
variety of lighter music in Italy during this period, especially
including the frottola. The frottola did not possess the complicated
polyphonic texture of the higher profile madrigal, but did provide
beautiful melodies with an Italian sense of clarity. This simple
style of melody & accompaniment was to persist and transform
itself into the main form of artistic expression in the 1600s,
replacing the truly polyphonic madrigal. Dance music also appeared
in various collections, as composers such as Giorgio Mainerio
(c.1535-1582) built upon what had been an embryonic Italian art in
the 1400s. Elaborate celebratory cycles, such as the famous La
Pellegrina for a Medici wedding (1589), were created by
juxtaposing pieces in various genres, both vocal and instrumental.

Beyond the widespread use of instruments to accompany dancing
or celebrations, original "chamber music" also began to
appear, especially in published collections for the lute. The most
celebrated lutenist of the period was Francesco Canova da Milano
(1497-1543), but several other composers for lute prospered, as
the style developed a high degree of virtuosity. The other important
solo instrument remained the keyboard, as an entire school emerged
around Willaert in Venice. There, composers such as Claudio Merulo
(1533-1604) and Andrea Gabrieli (c.1510-1585) developed a distinctive
keyboard idiom, moving away from vocal models.

Spain in the 1500s

In the 1500s, Spain was in the middle of its "golden
age" in the wake of the American conquest, and instrumental
composition likewise formed a significant part. The blind organist
Antonio de Cabezón (1510-1566) wrote some of the first
abstract music conceived specifically for keyboard. Meanwhile,
Diego Ortiz published his Trattado de Glosas (1553), music
for solo viol with accompaniment as well as a discussion of
performance practice. In Spain, the primary plucked-string instrument
was the vihuela, resulting in a literature nearly rivaling that
for the lute in Italy. Prominent among the vihuelists was Luys de
Narvaez (c.1500-1555).

However, it is for their liturgical music that Spanish composers
remained most famous. Spain was conservative in this area throughout
the period, such that mass cycles there retained a traditional
polyphonic format into the 1600s. Following Gombert's move to
Spain with Charles V, other prominent northerners such as Thomas
Crecquillon (d.c.1557) took up residence at the court of the Holy
Roman Emperor. Native composers in a style conditioned by the
Franco-Flemish masters also flourished, beginning with Francisco
de Peñalosa (c.1470-1528) and Pedro de Escobar (c.1469-c.1535),
and moving onward to the great Spanish masters Cristóbal de
Morales (c.1500-1553) and Tomás Luis de Victoria (c.1549-1611).
Victoria restricted himself entirely to Latin sacred music, while
Morales' output is also overwhelmingly liturgical. Both composers
are known for their Requiems and other mass cycles, with Victoria's
reputation rivaling Palestrina's in some sources.

The conservative style was retained even longer in neighboring
Portugal, where many composers continued to write original polyphonic
liturgical music well into the late 1600s.

Continuing a native Spanish tendency which was already in evidence
in such medieval sources as the Cantigas & Llibre
Vermell, Spanish composers wrote numerous intriguing pieces in
the combined sacred-secular forms ensalada & villancico.
Both were based largely on Christmas themes, with the ensalada
combining multiple languages, while the villancico was a more
straightforward rustic application of sacred ideas in the vernacular.
Spanish songbooks also survived from this period, such as the
Cancionero de Palacio (c.1515) featuring music of the
prominent composer Juan del Enzina (1468-c.1530). Here the themes
ranged from traditional courtly love to more theatrical subjects,
a style subsequently developed by composers such as Juan Vásquez
(1510-1560) & Mateo Romero (1575-1647).

France in the 1500s

France became far more secular in this period, and it was the
chanson which was the leading arena for artistic development in
the 1500s. Composers such as Clément Janequin (c.1485-1560)
and Claudin de Sermisy (c.1490-1562) took the Parisian chanson to
new heights of imagination, adopting both rustic & fanciful
themes which served to deemphasize the traditional forms of courtly
love and inject a new sense of dynamism into songwriting. Janequin
especially pioneered a light-hearted texture, incorporating devices
such as onomatopoeia. Later, Claude Le Jeune (c.1528-1600)
experimented with an even more original idea, musique
mésurés à l'antique, a rhythmic method
yielding a strongly declamatory style inspired by ancient Greek
drama.

Although composers such as Janequin and Le Jeune also wrote
sacred music, including mass cycles, liturgical forms were not
prominent in France in the 1500s. One factor was the bloody battle
over the Reformation there, exemplified by the killing of prominent
Huguenot composer Claude Goudimel (1520-1572). Goudimel's settings
of psalms in French joined Le Jeune's chanson cycle Le Printans
(1603) as some of the most original works of the period.

Instrumental music was also published in France, especially
dances. Joining prominent publisher Pierre Attaingnant (c.1494-1551),
who published much of Janequin's work, Jacques Moderne (c.1495-1562)
published his famous collection of songs and dances in 1550,
Musicque de Joye. In nearby Antwerp, Tielman Susato
(c.1500-1561/4) published his famous Dansereye in 1551.
This remains the most prominent collection of Renaissance dances
today. Solo lute music also thrived in France, a tradition which
would meet its consummation in the Baroque era.

In the following generation, for the first time in centuries,
France aggressively adopted Italian style, rather than vice versa.

England in the 1500s

After its previously unprecedented impact on general European
style in the early 1400s, England returned to a state of relative
isolation, having no more impact on musical development elsewhere.
The next major English source was the Eton Choirbook (c.1500),
again featuring mostly sacred music. English style in this era
bore little resemblance to that of Josquin et al., but rather took
the antiphon style of Dunstable et al. to longer lengths with
soaring melismas. Those who elaborated on the style of the Eton
Choirbook included Robert Fayrfax (c.1464-1521) and especially
John Taverner (c.1490-1545). Both also wrote cyclic masses, and
the Benedictus section of Taverner's Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas
went on to form the basic thematic material of the long-lived In
Nomine consort genre.

Secular songs finally made a notable appearance in England in
this era, with the court of Henry VIII providing a fertile ground
for composers such as William Cornysh (c.1465-1523) and even the
king himself.

The more text-oriented style of European music began to influence
England in the generation of Thomas
Tallis (c.1505-1585), known especially for his 40-part Spem
in alium. However, although Tallis had a predilection for
trying unusual compositional techniques, most of his music is for
more conventional forces. Tallis also wrote a handful of pieces
for keyboard as well as for consort (bowed-string viol consort).
The latter were to prove especially representative of England
following the output of Christopher Tye (c.1505-1572).

Tallis was awarded a royal monopoly on music printing in England,
passing it to his student William Byrd (1543-1623) upon his death.
Byrd's tenure as England's greatest composer, coinciding with
Shakespeare and the Elizabethan age, is widely regarded as the
greatest flowering of music in that country. Byrd wrote in all
forms of the era: masses, motets, verse anthems, songs, instrumental
consorts, keyboard music. Byrd was caught up in Reformation
controversies, and his three masses are of utilitarian nature,
whereas his motets or Cantiones Sacræ (1575, 1589,
1591) are often more elaborate. He also wrote an entire series of
Propers settings for the liturgical year, Gradualia (1605,
1607). Byrd's songs were of a type called "consort songs"
in which an upper melody was supported by contrapuntal instrumental
parts, showing a clear connection with his smaller body of viol
consort music. Finally, Byrd's keyboard music was also particularly
notable, forming one of his main concerns late in life, and providing
the impulse for an entire school of Elizabethan keyboard composition.
This school was short-lived, but formed the basis for subsequent
developments in the Netherlands and northern Germany by Jan
Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621) et al.

Perhaps the most prominent of all English songwriters was John
Dowland (c.1563-1626). Although he sometimes included adaptations
for multiple voices, Dowland wrote in the "lute song"
genre, in which a single voice was accompanied by the lute.
Dowland's four books of songs are known for their frequently
melancholy character, and are especially popular today. Besides
the famous consort cycle Lachrimæ (1604), Dowland the
lutenist wrote a large quantity of lute music. This lute-oriented
instrumental output was representative of other English composers
of the period, notably Anthony Holborne (c.1547-1602).

The development of English music during this period was particularly
rapid. Composers of the next generation, such as Orlando Gibbons
(1583-1625), continued to build upon styles developed by Byrd, and
to create new formats. Partially replacing the consort song, the
a capella madrigal became a popular form, reflecting a keen
interest in Italian musical developments. Likewise, the consort
music of Gibbons and others made use of modern Italian ideas on
disposition and technique, while retaining a tangibly medieval
element to the counterpoint. Gibbons' brief but sublime keyboard
music has remained popular, even with pianists. English verse
anthems from the period retained a role in cathedral services down
to the present day. Finally, it was Thomas Morley (1557/8-1602)
who inherited Byrd's printing monopoly in 1596, and it was Morley
who helped to establish the madrigal and other Italianate forms,
likewise working in all genres.

Germany in the 1500s

We left German music in the medieval era with the minnesingers,
and it is indeed development of minnesong into meistersong which
formed the history of those intervening years. An important
transitional figure was Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376-1445), a
nobleman who imitated Italian Ars Nova songs. Meistersong meets
its apotheosis with the famous meistersinger Hans Sachs (1494-1576).
Various German songbooks survived from this era.

Germany's entry into modern compositional idioms began with
Isaac's move to Vienna under the Emperor Maximilian, where Isaac's
relative interest (among his Franco-Flemish contemporaries) in
instrumental music apparently met a favorable reception. Although
they were largely adaptations of Burgundian songs, German sources
of instrumental music were already prominent in the 1400s, and
typical manuscripts continued to include instrumental pieces
alongside vocal polyphony. Following Isaac, Swiss composer Ludwig
Senfl (1486-1543) was one of the first native Germans to write
original large-scale polyphony in the usual forms. This activity
was further consummated with the Reformation, and Martin Luther's
interest in music and dedication to Josquin's style. Composers
such as Johann Walther (1496-1570) and his successors enthusiastically
wrote polyphonic sacred music in German, forming the bulk of the
north German repertory.

Lassus' residence in Catholic southern Germany also had a profound
effect on that region, and further established a pipeline which
would have Italian composers working in Germany and German composers
studying in Italy into the Baroque era. Lassus' late settings,
such as his madrigal cycle Lagrime di San Pietro (1595),
were written in Germany. Analogous to Lassus' work in Munich,
fellow Flemish-by-way-of-Italy composer Philippe de Monte (1521-1603)
held the court position in nearby Prague, also writing in nearly
every genre of the day.

The major composer of German psalms in the last generation of
the 1500s was Michael Praetorius (1571-1621). Praetorius, from a
large musical family, is also well-known as a theorist and describer
of instruments. His
Terpsichore
(1612) was an especially popular collection of dances in a
late-Renaissance idiom.

The Baroque

Although the Baroque era is outside the bounds of the present
survey, some concluding thoughts are in order. Unlike the beginning
of the Renaissance, which involved various musical changes at
different times, and is widely open to interpretation, the musical
changes which defined Baroque style happened over a brief span of
time. Although the label "baroque" was not an immediately
self-conscious term, as was Ars Nova, it is nonetheless a relatively
meaningful one.

The development of Baroque style happened in Italy, and is very
strongly associated with Monteverdi. Briefly, the elements of that
style were: the new monody, basso
continuo, and the opera genre.
Monody was the name for the style by which a main voice in the
upper part was accompanied chordally by lower parts, forging what
was to become the primary idiom of Western music, both classical
and popular. Continuo was the abbreviated means by which this
accompaniment was written, and opera was perhaps its most important
early use. It was a desire to return to ancient Greek forms which
motivated composers such as Monteverdi to develop monody and opera.
Although we do not believe the music of Monteverdi et al. bore any
resemblance to that of ancient Greece, by the time these developments
occurred, any elements of medieval style remaining in Western music
had been radically transformed.